Letters: Water problems are a crisis

My thanks to Karen Ebert Yancey of the Kewaunee County Star-News, for her recent coverage of the controversy over manure treatment schemes, and to the many local residents who have been raising the alarm about the detrimental environmental impacts that industrial factory dairy farming has brought to Northeast Wisconsin. This includes water and air pollution, soil loss, degraded shoreline, and ground water (and well) contamination.

It’s gotten so bad, one official from a water purification company described the water quality in Kewaunee County as “third world.” And it’s getting worse.

Already a third of the county’s wells tested are contaminated. Rather than helping those citizens who can no longer use their water, and whose property values are consequently plummeting, County Board Chairman Ron Heuer recently tried to commit the county to spend an unbudgeted $66,000 to hire a lobbying firm to promote a giant “bio-digester” which could absorb ever increasing amounts of manure. Taxpayers would have to pay the monthly fee of $5,000, plus $500 per month in “expenses,” to promote still more manure. This would be a private business subsidy, at a time county departments are all being asked to reduce expenditures.

But despite the controversy and public outcry, there are more cows and CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding (feces) operations) coming to Kewaunee County. Our County Board chair, along with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, claim that “you can’t limit the number of cows.”

Given current growth trends of industrial factory dairy farms, Kewaunee County could be seeing an increasing tsunami of untreated sewage – equivalent to 20 to 30 times the output of the city of Green Bay. This toxic brew is disposed of by spreading it over this uniquely vulnerable karst landscape. You’d be hard pressed to find a place less conducive to absorb the waste from 16 CAFOs and counting.

What can you do about this mess? Vote. We need political leaders, both state and local, willing to look out for the best interest of every citizen in the county, diverse private businesses, and our agricultural community at large, not just CAFOs.